Aleksandar Tisma - The Book of Blam

I can’t believe that it’s over, that I can move about, breathe freely, that I’m no longer threatened with death or persecution. We’ve had an exceptionally beautiful autumn here. It’s not the slightest bit cold. The leaves in the many parks are just beginning to turn. Papa and I walk for hours through the hills surrounding the town. Yes, I need motion and freedom: we spent the last four months in a camp. We didn’t have too bad a time of it, but barbed wire everywhere you looked — that I will never forget. Now we have private accommodations, but Papa still brings home food from the camp, where he gives English lessons. You know how capable he is. He gets so much food, we can give some to our landlords, an elderly couple that might otherwise starve to death. Try to picture them: he a retired professor of literature who has been totally blind for eight years, she reading him his favorite authors, Dante and Tasso, every night by the oil lamp (we have no electricity). I often sit and listen, and though I don’t understand a thing, I enjoy the melody of the marvelous language.

Write back the minute you receive this, darling, and pack your belongings. I don’t know whether you were wrong not to come with us four years ago. Maybe you were spared many of the trials we’ve gone through, but don’t think twice now. We’re free here, and I await you with open arms. I long for you as I never have before, though I’ve done nothing else these four years. I will never, can never forget the days we spent together, and although we were on the run, Papa and I, and in danger, those were the most beautiful days of my life, and all thanks to you, darling, to your warm eyes, your quiet smile, your restless hands. I long to have you by my side, I long to touch you, hold you. Come!

I don’t even ask if the others are alive and well. Uncle Vilim. Aunt Blanka. Estera (who is no longer a little girl, I’m sure). I’m selfish, I know. I think only of you. I love you so much.

Come, come at once! Or at least let me hear from you! Send a telegram if you can!

Hugs and kisses from your impatient

Lili

Tivoli near Rome, 26 December 1944

Dearest ,

I can’t tell you how crushed I am: the letter I sent you two months ago came back the day before yesterday. What can that mean? That you’re out of town? That you’ve been deported and haven’t returned? That you’ve moved? I don’t dare think of all the awful things likely to keep me from finding you. I will simply keep looking tirelessly, undaunted, until I succeed. I’ve been told I can send this letter via the Red Cross and that the American forces are helping people to locate lost relatives. You can be sure I will try everything. But if you receive my letter first (because things may have changed in the meantime), let me hear from you at once.

Yours ,

Lili

Biel, 23 March 1946

Dear Mirko ,

It’s been raining for days, and I sit here in despair. Perhaps I have no right to despair, perhaps I’ll suddenly find some trace of you, but when, I wonder, when? I keep thinking of the past, the irretrievable past. I think of my dear mother, who died so young and full of life. I think of you, who filled my life with love for one brief interval and whom I left behind. Why did I leave you? Why must I leave everyone I love? Why does my hunger for life, for survival, keep me from happiness, which, brief as it may be, is possibly worth more than the life now facing me?

I fear the life now facing me. It is a cold life and will grow colder. Perhaps the cold comes from Switzerland with its mountains covering the sky, its endless winter rains, its dull, sober people who know nothing of warmth, desire, and love. Every other week we are visited by an immigration office official who gives us forms to complete, the same forms each time. Where and when were you born? Why have you entered the country? How do you make your living? Do you plan to stay? If not, when do you plan to leave? Do I plan? What do I plan? The only thing they don’t ask is whether I plan to kill myself and if so when and in what manner?

Forgive me for writing you my dark and jumbled thoughts, darling. It’s not so bad. We’re fine. Papa has a job in a local sewing machine factory. He is well paid and well respected, and we have everything we need. We’ve taken a beautiful apartment, and soon we’re going to buy a car (a used car for now), which means we’ll be able to wander to our hearts’ content.

Spring is in the air, I can feel it in my bones, and maybe the reason I’m so out of sorts is that it refuses to come. I do so need sun and motion! And I need you, my darling! You have no idea how much I think of you, how often I dream of you, dream of you coming to me — sometimes with a slightly ironic smile because I’m so impatient — and embracing me as you once did. But then I wake up and I’m alone, you are not next to me, and I realize I don’t even know where you are and am haunted by thoughts of the most terrifying possibilities. Forgive me, but what can I do? The letters I sent you from Italy (you still don’t know where we were when the war ended) were returned to me, and all my inquiries through the Red Cross and the embassy have been in vain. Still, I will never, can never believe that the end has come. No, you are too much a part of me, we are two halves of a single body, and one part cannot be separated from the other without the other’s knowing it, feeling it. You’re alive, aren’t you? You’ll let me hear from you at once. You will, won’t you?

I haven’t the courage to finish and send off this letter. It’s been sitting on my desk for three days now. Do you see what I’m afraid of?

The weather is nice. There is dew shining on the grass when I walk Papa to the factory in the morning. Each time I come home, I think I’m going to find you in my room, just sitting there and smiling. I’m writing these last lines in a café, and I’ll rush home as soon as I send off the letter. But even if I don’t find you there and even if this letter too comes back, I’ll write you another and another and I won’t stop until I’ve found you. I want you to know that, if you receive these lines. Ever, anywhere. I shall always wait for you. Write me at once.

Yours ,

Lili

Hamburg, 7 June 1949

Dearest Mirko ,

I’ve decided to write to you immediately because I’m happy, and superstitious enough to hope that one happy event will lead to another. I arrived here yesterday from Biel, and right after breakfast — because I had a nine-o’clock appointment — I went off to the Grammophongesellschaft, where I had a personal interview with the head of production. Papa has invented a kind of filing cabinet for records. I don’t know how it is in Yugoslavia, but here record collecting is all the rage and people are making record libraries the way they used to make book libraries. Anyway, Papa has come up with a system of shelves that allows you to choose the record you want to play by pushing a button. It took a lot of work (and money) to perfect it and put together a prototype in a factory in Bern. But now we’re out of the woods! The man I spoke to has expressed interest in manufacturing and marketing the “Ehrlich cabinet” and is drawing up a contract that will give us 1.5 % of the profits. (Papa isn’t feeling well, which is why I’m here on my own, but I’m sure that as usual it comes from his working too hard and that the good news will put him back on his feet.)

I was so excited and happy when I left the Grammophongesellschaft office that I had the sudden feeling I was going to find you, so I made for the nearest café to write to you again. I simply can’t imagine that this letter will fail to reach you now that after all these years of deprivation we have finally latched on to something solid. Actually we made a big mistake by not coming straight to Germany after the war. We both knew it, we even talked it over, but whenever it came time to take the final step, one of us would find some “but,” which as you can guess always boiled down to the fact that we had suffered so from Germany and the Germans. Now that I’m here, though, I see it’s the only place for us. There’s nothing to remind us of the old hatreds. The people I meet on the train, in the street, the Grammophongesellschaft — they’re all so open and optimistic and full of energy, and even though there’s rubble everywhere, there’s also building everywhere, the streets are full of life, the shopwindows full of goods, the service in taxis, on the phone, and in cafés is excellent. And the language! After all that murky Swiss dialect I am finally hearing the pure, flowing German my dear departed mother taught me. I feel revitalized, reborn.